Daughter, Daddy and Diva Do Disney!!! -- sep 2011

[Victoriasmom98]

Starting this trip report soon.....stay tooned!!!!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

I'm first! I'm first!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

I'm first! I'm first!

That's cause you're stalking me!!!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

That's cause you're stalking me!!!

Yup!

 

[daisy_77]

Hi there!

So I spent a good portion of my day reading your pre-trip report and you're last TR...the disneymoon one. I loved every second! You have such a nice little family and I look forward to reading about your latest adventure in Disney

 

[JDailey]

YAY you are back!! I know you are probably not happy to be back though. I am always so sad when it is over. I can't wait to hear about everything. We only have two weeks to go and I am sooo ready!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

I’m here! I can’t wait to read along!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Welcome one and all to DADDY, DAUGHTER & DIVA DO DISNEY!!! I cannot believe tomorrow we will have been back home for one week. It feels like yesterday that we were there! And in 11 months and 10 days we will be there again….ooops, did I just let the cat out of the bag? Well more on that later! I should start with the introductions…..

There’s my wonderful daughter Victoria who is 13 going on 27!!! She is an 8th grader who does very well in school so I really have no issues pulling her out of school for the 7 or so days it turns out to be. This year, she did get some of her work to take to Disney with us…..great activity for the plane ride home, right??? She’s not as big of a Disney fanatic, I mean fan, as I am, but I’m working on her. She’s heavily into her computer and having a blog on Tumbler, Diviantart and I can’t remember what else she does. Apparently Facebook is so yesterday…? Ok?? Apparently so I am!

Then there is my husband of ONE WHOLE YEAR – Peter! (And they said it would never last…..just kidding!) We were married last September 18th on the beach here in Maine and then honeymooned in Disney with the child. I think I eventually will have him converted into a Disney fan! Slowly but surely. Unfortunately, he does not do many rides --- POTC and IASW is about the speed he can do. Oh, I do have him riding Test Track now, but I think that’s because he loves cars. He works full time with propane burners and such so on the weekend he spends his time with his cars, trucks and other motorized vehicles. I’ve lost count of the vehicles he does have but I think it’s up to about 17 or so. Granted, some of them are not all in one piece, but he does have them. He loves buying old pieces of formerly beautiful cars and restoring them. (wasn't that a nice way to say "pieces of crap?? I thought so!) Hey, he loves it and it keeps him out of trouble, so why not?

Finally there’s me…..a huge Disneyworld geek! I will ride ALL the rides and see ALL the shows at least once! My first trip to Disney was in 1982 --- I was a sophomore in high school at the time and was hooked. (ok, don’t go adding my age up now. I just gave the date for informational purposes, not to let you all in on how old I am!) I think it’s been about 16 or so trips now. I’ve lost count. My philosophy is as long as I can afford it and have the health to do it, I will always go to Disney. My goal is once per year. (ok, fine….my real goal is to retire from my government job and go play the Fairy Godmother in Disney) but my real life goal is good enough for me for now.

The last person in this picture is….well…..if I have to explain that, then you really wouldn’t be reading this trip report now would you? I think not!

There you have it for introductions. We are a pretty simple bunch. We go to work and school and have your typical family life. We take a once per year big vacation (Disney) and lots of little weekend trips around the state of Maine. My life is pretty darned perfect if you ask me. Oh, that’s not to say we haven’t had our trials and tribulations. Our health has not been great, but those are all things which make us stronger, right?

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Great start, Ann! I'm looking forward to reading more!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Hi there!

So I spent a good portion of my day reading your pre-trip report and you're last TR...the disneymoon one. I loved every second! You have such a nice little family and I look forward to reading about your latest adventure in Disney

Hi and !! I'm glas you enjoyed the prior reports. I really do enjoy writing them. Thank you for the compliment on my family. Yes, I do love them!!

YAY you are back!! I know you are probably not happy to be back though. I am always so sad when it is over. I can't wait to hear about everything. We only have two weeks to go and I am sooo ready!

Yep, I'm back...... It's ok. I can't live in Disney, right (or CAN I????). I hope you plan on keeping a diary so that you can share your adventures with me!!!

I’m here! I can’t wait to read along!

Hi my buddy!!!! I'm here and posting now.....hee hee!!!

Oh, I just had to share a picture of two of my cats Milo and Reeses prior to my packing the suitcase.....

 

[Victoriasmom98]

September 8th, 2011

And we’re off!!! Yes, we were successful at leaving at 5am although the 4am alarm was a bit of a shock! I had put all of the luggage in the car the night before so that all we would have to worry about packing was the carryons. That’s where we put all of our last minute things like medication, money, etc. I didn’t really sleep that well as I was worrying about getting there on time, as Manchester was an airport we have never flown out of before. I had Googled the directions to the airport and it did turn out to be pretty easy to get there. We parked in the Long Term parking lot (under C-6) and waited at the little bus stop for the shuttle to the terminal --- sure beats walking with all that luggage! See, kids…..it pays to do your research! I was able to find out about the parking lot charges and shuttle to the terminal all before arriving! We flew Southwest Airlines and since I had printed out the boarding passes yesterday, it was just a matter of checking in our 3 bags. BAGS FLY FREE!!! We had paid for early bird check in so we were in seating group A which means we were the first group to board the plane. There are no assigned seats on SW, so Victoria led the way and picked out 3 seats together near the wing. I hate viewing the wing! I kept thinking about the scene of the Twilight Zone when the creature knocks out the engine! The original version had William Shatner as the passenger, but the movie version has John Lithgow.

OOOppps, that was a little off topic, huh? Takeoff was great and the flight itself was fine. We did hit turbulence as we got into Baltimore. Great! Peter hates to fly and that just makes it worse. Oh thank you air gods! We had about one hour in between flights so we grabbed some lunch. Victoria had, what else, McDonalds and Peter & I had slices of pizza. Both planes we flew in were 737’s. I was really surprised that there wasn’t any radios in the arm rests. That’s the first time I haven’t had that option in a plane--- kind of disappointing. Anyways, we landed around 2:40pm and were able to get right on to Magical Express (ok, it was a huge Mears, bus, but it was still considered the Magical Express). Maybe there was a 5 minute wait at best. It was AWESOME!!! POFQ was the first stop!!! How lucky can we get??!!!! Yeah baby!

We got to the resort around 4pm. We were assigned room 3230, which is the second floor in the 3rd building --- view of the courtyard. Not too bad. Jazz music was constantly playing and everything was just so lush and green! I was hoping for Building 4, but 3 seemed ok. It’s pretty close to everything. The room itself is BEAUTIFUL!!! I loved the queen sized beds!

We didn’t stay in the room all that long as we had 5:10pm dinner ADR’s at T-Rex! We took the water taxi to Downtown Disney….ummmm heaven!!

Thanks to my Avon sales and Mypoints, I only had to come up with about $5 of my own money for that one. I think Peter really got a kick out of the décor! He even started having a conversation with the dinosaur that kept roaring behind him. So funny!!!! We did a little shopping and then headed back to the hotel. We had an early morning planned for tomorrow, so this worked out perfectly!!!!

This is the new Toy Story lego sculpture I just had to share....

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Yay for arriving! Doing your research definitely pays off! I hadn't seen the TS lego yet, that's cool! Glad you guys enjoyed T-Rex, can't wait to hear more!

 

[JDailey]

I would really like to do a post trip report. I haven't ever done anything like that before, so I am a little confussed at how you would start one??. Any tips I don't want to be too boring??

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Friday, September 9th……

Today started off with the alarm going off at 6am. Everyone was great about getting up and getting ready. We were out the door by 7:15am and down to the bus stop we go. Fortunately, it’s a very short distance from the room. As we were sitting there waiting, there were 3 busses for the MK prior to one for Animal Kingdom! Finally one came at 7:40am. Oh no…this is not good. Will we actually get to AK and make it to Tusker House for our reservation at the Donald’s Safari Breakfast?? Well, no. We were about 10 minutes late but that seemed to be ok with the restaurant. See kids….this is why the Disboards tell you to head out on the transportation system about one hour before your scheduled time. They know what they are talking about! It’s really cute how they direct you to the restaurant with little signs and cast members saying “right this way” and “welcome”. We then lined up for our picture with Donald Duck.

We were seated and our server was Angel. She was very sweet and the food was absolutely wonderful! It was buffet style.

By the time we were done breakfast, it was 9:10am and the park had just opened. First on our list was the Kilimanjaro Safari. It was basically a walk right on --- an indication of how most of our week went! It took longer to walk down to the loading area than it did standing in line for a vehicle, which we didn’t have to. Again, what Dis’er’s say is true --- the animals are much more lively and awake first thing in the morning! There was even an ostrich blocking the road at one point. Hey, it’s his road….why should he move, right??? That was about a 5 minute wait for him to move! One of the cast members were feeding the flamingoes as we went by. I thought that was pretty cool. The lioness were out and looking at us lovingly (or maybe they were thinking how easy we would be to catch ---- let’s go with the first thought…..) We saw the little baby elephant (the real one --- not the one in the great kidnapping adventure we were supposedly on).

We ended up taking the train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch and Conservation Station. There they had just finished a biopsy on the tail of a possum and were in the process of waking her up. So adorable! We also spent time talking with the handler of a tarantula. That was pretty interesting, even though I’m not crazy about spiders!

After Peter and Victoria went outside, the announcement was made that some characters were coming out. Now, this is my goal of this trip --- to meet as many characters as I can without it really affecting our trip adversely. I think my family is right behind me and wanted them to get in the pictures with me. Do you think they are? Nope! Fine, I’ll have my pictures taken and I hope the two of them will be completely jealous! (Which they weren’t). I was a little miffed that I was here with my family and yet, you can’t prove it by those pictures. I met Pocahontas and Jiminy Cricket.

Really cool! By the time I had taken my pictures, Victoria was ready to ride. We went over to Expedition Everest and since the standby line was only 10 minutes, we first got a fast pass for later and then went standby. I need to mention here that a 10 minute standby means walk right on. Apparently Disney feels it takes 10 minutes to walk the queue. It probably does, I wasn’t keeping track. I really love this ride!!! We ended up riding it at least 4 or 5 times during the entire day!!!

I wanted to go see Flights of Wonder, but it didn’t look like it was operating to me. Hmmm…..Although the Times Guide didn’t mention anything about it being closed for the day….oh well. We did most of the rides and Tough to be a Bug.

This year we decided to forgo Nemo for Festival of the Lion King. I think Peter really enjoyed that show. We were in the Elephant section and let me just say, we knew how to play pachyderms!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Yay for no lines! I was watching reports and excited for you that the crowds were so low. Love your AK outfit!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Animal Kingdom day continued....

Another different thing we did this year was the Maharajah Jungle Trek. OMG!!! This trail is awesomely beautiful! There were ruins and it was just beautiful! I don’t know why we never did this before. The tigers were our absolute favorite sight!! And they were so active --- not just lying around!

HAVE I MENTIONED THAT IT WAS HOT???!!! HOT, HOT, HOT. IT WAS HOT, FOLKS!!! It was sunny and in the 90’s all week. There were some days without high humidity, but our day in Animal Kingdom was not one of them…ugh! That is my weather channel update for now.

We saw Thumper and Ms. Bunny!!! More characters I haven’t seem before. So cool!!!

We headed out of the park around 4pm to make it to our reservations at Cape May at the Yacht Club Resort. Yes, kids, our reservation was for 5pm, so again, make sure to leave an hour before your reservation to make sure you get there. Does it always rain when we are at the Yacht Club? Seems to. While waiting for our time, the thunderstorm moved in. We were inside, so we really didn’t care, but it seemed to be a good one! By the time we were done our dinner, it turned to just misty. I’m good with that. In order to get back to French Quarter, we took the bus to Hollywood Studios and then a bus to POFQ. There are no buses directly from resort to resort. It takes some thought to figure out how to get to different places, but it’s manageable. That night’s agenda was bath time for Victoria and bedtime for all.

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Ann, your outfit for AK was too cute! And ohmygosh were those MATCHING socks?!? Adorable! It looks like you guys had a great couple of days. Keep the food porn coming! You also got some wonderful pictures of the animals. Especially the tigers!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Yay for arriving! Doing your research definitely pays off! I hadn't seen the TS lego yet, that's cool! Glad you guys enjoyed T-Rex, can't wait to hear more!

Well, I've been writing more, silly......aren't you keeping up???

I would really like to do a post trip report. I haven't ever done anything like that before, so I am a little confussed at how you would start one??. Any tips I don't want to be too boring??

It's really simple. Just keep a diary while you are there and then you basically write that (with embellishments, of course!!)

Yay for no lines! I was watching reports and excited for you that the crowds were so low. Love your AK outfit!

I HATED my outfit!!! It looked great on the hanger...less than great on.

Ann, your outfit for AK was too cute! And ohmygosh were those MATCHING socks?!? Adorable! It looks like you guys had a great couple of days. Keep the food porn coming! You also got some wonderful pictures of the animals. Especially the tigers!

As you can see from my reply to Karen, I didn't like the outfit at all!!!! Needless to say it's in the pile to Goodwill!! It was too big, the stripes made my tummy look huge, and it was too long!!! I had black shorts underneath, but most people are saying it looks like a dress!! ugh! The socks sorta kinda matched --- close enough! Those I have kept!! . I hope you don't get too disapointed, but I really didn't take a lot of food porn. Just wasn't that much of a priority. Sorry, buddy!! Thanks for the compliment on my photos. They suck. No, really. I hate this new GE camera. Yesterday I finally gave in and sent my older one in for repair. The older one takes so much better pictures! I know this because I went to a scrapping event on Saturday and you could really tell the difference just by looking at them. I think the pixels are higher on the older one. Who knows? But if it's $100 or less to fix it, that's what I'm going to do.

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Saturday, September 10th
Magic Kingdom Day

Well this morning’s adventure started out with 2 different people noticing my lime green Mickey head on my backpack and saying hi at the bus stop at the resort. I so wish now I would have gotten their names. Sorry to you both if you are reading this. This morning we had breakfast reservations at Ohana with Lilo & Stitch! I love this place and the character interaction. We took the bus over to MK and then took the resort monorail to the Polynesian. This is sooo much quicker than taking the boat over from the MK, but the boat ride is a nice break. It just wasn’t up and running yet. We had the monorail car all to ourselves. Gotta love low crowd September!!

We didn’t bother to get our picture done this time around as we have another breakfast scheduled for later on in the vacation. The food was great as usual, although I was having trouble eating this morning. I swear sometimes it still feels like the lap band is in. Ugh! I can’t explain it. Oh well.

We then took the boat back to MK. Would you believe on the way back we saw the smoke formation from the space shuttle launch?? How cool is that. I had seen on tv news that morning that a shuttle was scheduled, so this was sooooo neat!!! It looked just like pictures I had seen, but this time I was seeing it in real life. Wow! This trip has been full of firsts for me!

Victoria wanted to start the day in Tomorrowland, so that’s what we did. We hit the TTA first, which is now a tradition for us. It gives you a nice little “tour” of that section and it’s a nice relaxing ride while you decide what you will be doing for the day. After the first round was done, we asked to stay on and do a second spin around. This is the benefit of low crowds, walk on rides, baby! Nothing like it!

We did all the rides/shows in this area except for Astro Orbiter. That one gets even ME sick --- and I never get sick on rides! In all the trips I’ve gone on here, I’ve never met Push the talking garbage can. That’s going to be a goal for next time! After that we made our way to Fantasyland. We could see the construction of Beast’s castle over the barriers among other things. We didn’t do a whole lot over there. I even forgot to have my family try to pull out the sword! Oh my!!! I’m slacking, aren’t I? I didn’t realize until I read some other reports that it actually comes out for some. I did not know that! Or is that a rumor? Hmmm….. We did get a fast pass for Peter Pan’s Flight as that wait was 30 minutes ---- the longest wait time I’ve seen. I’ll be darned if I’m going to wait that long (hehehehe --- I’M KIDDING, FOLKS!!). We then headed over to It’s a Small World --- Peter’s first time as it was under refurbishment last year. I think he really liked it. It was his speed after all.

We then ate lunch at Columbia Harbor House. What a cute little place that is!! We did go find the room which is over the walkway between Liberty Square and Fantasyland. It’s like “hi people…..I’m eating on top of your heads!!” It was really cool to people watch from there. Of course this is where Victoria spilled lots of ketchup all over the front of her shirt……arrrgggg! It’s ok, I’m over it now….

After lunch we went back to use our Peter Pan fast passes and then it was onto The Haunted Mansion. We did both the regular queue and the new interactive graveyard queue. The graveyard one is neat, but I think once you do it, that’s it. At least it was for us. We had our Photopass photo taken right by the dead horse and carriage and it was one of those “magic” shots where the computer will insert the ghost when you see the picture!

I just wish the Photopass pictures would be in so I can share them. Speaking of Photopass, I noticed a lot more photographers around the park than in the past. Maybe it was because I was actively seeking them out, I’m not sure. I’ll get my $20 worth out of the Photopass share I participated in, won’t I?? Oh, the leader of the share states we should all be getting the cd by the end of October. I CAN’T WAIT THAT LONG!!! I have gone and edited all of them and some are so cute! There was one mistake one of the photographer’s made ----- instead of my family with Woody and Jessie, I had some other little girl’s pictures loaded onto my card. That poor girl’s family!!! No Woody and Jessie pics for them. And of course there is no way for me to know who they belong to. I think my family was getting pretty sick of me and all my photos…..oh well guys --- this is my vacation too, you know! Do what I say!!!

Another first for me was riding on the steamboat The Liberty Belle. In all the times I’ve been to Disney, I’ve never taken the time out to do that. Wow….what a nice little ride that was. The views were awesome and they even have a storyline to the scenery that surrounds you.

It was then off to Splash Mountain and BTMRR ---- both of which were WALK ON!!! Anyone jealous yet? Oh, I love, love, love low crowds!! The wait time stated 10 minutes, but again, that’s as long as it takes to walk through the queue!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Pirates of the Carribean was next. Love this ride, but unfortunately, this was a very long line and I don’t really understand why. To top that off, there was an annoying bunch of teenagers with a Christian tour group out back of us --- one of which kept hitting my backpack. Ugh! I wanted to turn around and whack one of them! I know, not very Christian of ME, but geez!!! Maybe I was wrong to expect better behavior from these kids. My bad, apparently. After that, I was DONE!! I had had it and I wanted to go back to the resort! The park was closing at 7pm for the Night of Joy party/concert. No wonder the park seemed to get fuller as it got later! We caught the bus back to the resort. Barely any wait for the bus and the bus itself was pretty empty!